When Cambodia recently staged a national film festival, serious drama was in gruesomely short supply: almost half the entries were low-budget horror flicks.
It wasn't always thus.
In the 1960s, now-retired King Norodom Sihanouk was not only the patron of a Cambodian film industry, he was one of its most active practitioners. He wrote, directed and even acted in his own high-minded if formulaic romances and tragedies.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF FOX MOVIES
More than 300 Cambodian films were made during that vibrant era, some well-received in other Asian countries.
But when the communist, puritanical Khmer Rouge regime came to power in the mid-1970s it banned all kinds of entertainment and smashed cameras and film-making equipment.
As the country's spirit began to recover from the Khmer Rouge era, and economic revival took hold in the early 1990s, the industry began to rebound. More than 100 production houses sprang up, mostly using video equipment to churn out movies on a shoestring.
But most of them collapsed because of their amateurism, and the industry is still struggling to recover its former glory.
These days, about five movie making companies have the expertise and strong finances to succeed, said Chheng Sovanna, head of the Culture Ministry's movie production office.
``Most of them are accidental producers, who just spent US$3,000 on a camera, bought some tapes, turned on the light and started shooting,'' said Chheng Sovanna, himself a director who graduated from Russia's State Institute of Cinematography. ``We don't understand the way they make movies.''
And the filmmakers lean more toward anarchy than artistry on screen.
At the recent festival, a typical movie featured a female vampire baring her canine teeth in a grin as she looked for prey. In Nieng Arp, or Lady Vampire, a flying female head with internal organs dangling beneath it chased a terrified couple in the dark.
Nine of the festival's 22 entries were in a similar vein.
``We make movies to suit the domestic market and the demand of our youths,'' said Korm Chanthy, the manager of FCI Productions, which made Nieng Arp.
``They like to watch horror movies because they make them feel excited, thrilled and terrified,'' he said.
The government wasn't impressed. The filmmakers ``injected too much hallucination and superstition'' into their work, complained Culture Minister Prince Sisowath Panara Sirivuth.
``Their understanding of moviemaking is that it's just business,'' he said. ``And they have this misperception that, without training, they can still make movies.''
The government has touted the idea of establishing a film school, but in a country so poor and reliant on foreign aid as Cambodia the idea is unlikely to get off the ground anytime soon.
Producer, 29-year-old Heng Tola, was looking to diversify his computer business when he founded Campro three years ago with several friends.
Making a movie takes Campro about three months and costs an average of US$30,000, including about US$1,000 for the lead actor, he said.
Despite the current taste for horror movies, Heng Tola believes a more serious trend is emerging, prompted in part by the resentment many Cambodians feel about its colonial past and toward domineering neighbors such as Thailand and Vietnam.
One of the festival entries was a nationalistic epic about a peasant protest against high tax imposed by Cambodia's colonial rulers, the French.
``The Cambodian movie is being reborn after a long absence. Its existence has been up and down, and the question now is how we can make it really stand,'' Heng Tola said.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built